Older Adult Nest Egg helps frontline professionals review significant financial decisions to identify and protect seniors vulnerable to fraud. Older adults lose billions of dollars each year to fraud, identity theft, and scams. Now, thanks to new screening interviews created by gerontologist and researcher Dr. Peter Lichtenberg, professionals have the tools to determine awareness, influence, and judgment about an older client's recent financial decisions.
Whether you are a banker, financial planner, attorney or social worker, Older Adult Nest Egg has the appropriate interview tool to help you assess and assist your client. The reliability of Dr. Lichtenberg's method has been validated across more than three years of field-testing. His new Family & Friends Assessment asks a trusted relative or friend about the client’s financial decision for additional validation of findings. Whether you are a seasoned interviewer or a novice, Older Adult Nest Egg can help you identify seniors at risk of exploitation, while respecting the rights of those whose decisions are made authentically and with integrity.
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Hard Truths
One out of every 20 older adults in the U.S. is a victim of financial exploitation, losing an average of $80,000 to $186,000.
Nearly half of these crimes are committed by someone the older adult knows and trusts, like a relative or caregiver.
Financial Decision Tracker
10 Questions
For professionals who often work with older adults making significant financial decisions, including attorneys, financial planners, bankers, investment brokers, insurance agents, accountants, law enforcement officers, and Adult Protective Services case workers.
INTERVIEW IS ELECTRONICALLY SCORED AND RECORDED AND TAKES APPROXIMATELY 10 MINUTES
This brief 10-item interview examines a specific financial decision made by an older adult to assess his or her financial judgment, vulnerability to theft and scams, and whether financial predation may have taken place.
The number of older adults with Alzheimer’s disease, lack of financial capacity and risk for financial exploitation is increasing. Cognitive impairment and financial exploitation often go hand-in-hand. Professionals working with older adults can help prevent financial exploitation while documenting for compliance and risk management that proper assessments were done prior to the transaction. Learn efficient, accurate, state-of-the-art, and empirically supported methods of evaluating your older client’s major financial decisions.
The Tracker asks the client about choice, rationale, understanding, and appreciation of a financial decision in the context of the client’s values. These decisional abilities determine the client's awareness, understanding and autonomy in making the decision.
Request an Account
Request an account for free training and online access to the Financial Decision Tracker. Your password protected account keeps every interview secure, organized and accessible to you alone.
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Training
The Tracker is a structured, multiple choice interview designed to be conducted in a standardized format while encouraging the client to elaborate as inclined. First-time users of the online Financial Decision Tracker must complete a brief training on the correct way to conduct the interview, and tips to make the results more useful. Our easy to follow online training insures a consistent application, accurate capture of spontaneous data, and valid results.
Contact Us for more information on training options for groups or organizations.
Get TrainedTrainings & Consultations
Some level of training is required by anyone interested in conducting the interviews available here. Training to use the Decision Tracker is available to everyone. The Vulnerability Assessment, however, should be conducted only by a trained certified mental health professional.
Groups or organizations interested in receiving training in the correct use of any of the Lichtenberg Financial Decision-Making tools should contact Dr. Lichtenberg. He conducts trainings in person, via conference call or webinar. Participants learn the science behind the interview tools and how to administer and score them. Dr. Lichtenberg also consults with organizations to help them understand the problem of financial exploitation and how these tools can protect their employees and the older clients they serve.
Call 313-664-2633 or use Contact Us to email.
Financial Vulnerability Assessment
33 Questions
For mental health professionals who are well-trained in administering standardized tests, including psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, therapists, counselors, clinical social workers, nurse practitioners and pastoral counselors.
INTERVIEW IS ELECTRONICALLY SCORED AND RECORDED AND TAKES APPROXIMATELY 45 MINUTES
The Financial Vulnerability Assessment is an in-depth interview to determine the factors involved in an older adult’s financial decisions. This includes an assessment of cognitive impairment, situational awareness and undue influence and their impact on financial decision making.
The number of older adults with Alzheimer’s disease, lack of financial capacity and risk for financial exploitation is increasing. Cognitive impairment and financial exploitation often go hand-in-hand. Professionals working with older adults can help prevent financial exploitation while documenting for compliance and risk management that the proper assessments were completed prior to the transaction. Learn efficient, accurate, state-of-the-art, and empirically supported methods of evaluating your older client’s major financial decisions.
Request an Account
Request an account for free training and online access to the Financial Vulnerability Assessment. Your password protected account keeps every interview secure, organized and accessible to you alone.
Request AccountTraining
The Assessment is a structured, multiple choice interview designed to be conducted in a standardized format while encouraging the client to elaborate as inclined. First-time users of the online Financial Vulnerability Assessment must complete training on the correct way to conduct the interview. Our easy to follow online training insures a consistent application, accurate capture of spontaneous data, and valid results. Documentation certifying you as a trained mental health professional may be required.
Contact Us for more information on training options for groups or organizations.
Ongoing Research
Research is critical to refine and continuously improve our assessment and prevention tools. We recruit older adults to cross-validate the Financial Vulnerability Assessment. We collect data on use of the interview in older adults in Virginia, Minnesota and New York. The Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center has also made the Tracker interview part of its longitudinal study on cognitive changes.
About Peter Lichtenberg, PhD, ABPP
Dr. Lichtenberg is a national expert in financial capacity assessment and the financial exploitation of older adults. An award-winning author and researcher, his interest in how older adults make financial decisions, and the responsibility to defend autonomy while protecting the vulnerable, led him to create the interview tools found here.
He has conducted medical evaluations and been an expert witness in more than 80 cases related to older adults and capacity. Dr. Lichtenberg is the author of seven books including the two-volume APA Handbook of Clinical Geropsychology (2015). He has written more than 200 peer-reviewed articles in areas such as mental health in long-term care, geriatric depression, and the detection and management of Alzheimer's. In 2013, he became one of the nation’s first Diplomates in Clinical Geropsychology (ABPP). Dr. Lichtenberg has received more than a dozen awards, most recently the Courage to Lead Award from the Oakland County Elder Abuse Task Force and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Area Agency on Aging. As director of Wayne State’s Institute of Gerontology, he has won record levels of funding and created programs reaching more than 10,000 older adults and professionals a year.
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Institute of Gerontology
At Wayne State University
87 East Ferry St.,
Pauline Knapp Building
Detroit, MI 48202